Abstract

Improving external relations and the management of development aid is a key component of the current reform of the European Union (EU). In the course of the 1990s, the promotion of democracy, the strengthening of good governance and enhancing the rule of law progressively became both an objective and a condition for the EU development assistance with developing countries. Achieving these sometimes-contradictory goals in practice is a permanent challenge. This paper reviews the EU’s policies and strategies aimed at preventing conflict and responding to the crises of governance. It explores the difficult combination of democracy assistance and governance conditionality and its applicability to the prevention of democratic erosion in developing countries. While the EU mainly relies on a positive approach of support and inducement, it has also introduced, since 1995, provisions to suspend aid in the event of a sudden and persistent interruption of the democratisation process. The suspension mechanism enshrined in the cooperation agreement between the EU and ACP countries has made political dialogue the main strategic tool for achieving these varied purposes. Mainstreaming political dialogue into the cooperation forces the EC to focus more explicitly and more rigorously on issues of power, politics and democracy than it has done in the past. Governance conditionality constitutes a critical juncture between democracy promotion and conflict prevention strategies. The article is organised in three substantive sections. It successively addresses the policy, strategy and implementation dilemmas of EC democracy and governance activities in third countries, reviewing the policy responses of the EC to the crises of governance in Niger, Haiti, Côte d’Ivoire and Fiji. It argues that conducting structured political dialogue puts further demands on the management of aid. While punitive forms of political conditionality have proved largely ineffective, an incentive-based approach to governance conditionality could yield, if well managed, greater results. The article concludes with a series of proposals for enhancing the European Commission’s ability to manage political dialogue and governance conditionality to encourage democracy and prevent conflict.